The last 2 posts I wrote are geared to empower people to take charge of their executive function skills (or help guide their loved one to do the same). In this post, I will cover my top recommendations for books to increase executive functioning strategies. Books on executive functioning disorder can provide new ideas for how to work more efficiently, effectively and make navigating life easier. This post includes recommendations for executive functioning books targeting 4 different groups: adults, parents, teens, and children.
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Make sure to review the last posts full of definitions and helpful suggestions to get you started:
Executive Functioning Skills: Do You Have Them?
The Ultimate Guide: 15 Tips to Improve Executive Functioning Disorder
Recommendations for executive functioning books:
Books to help with executive functioning strategies for ADULTS:
It is not too late to develop new habits and work through what gets you stuck. These books will help you with new ideas for organizing and working through the challenges of executive dysfunction as an adult. The constant demands of life aren’t going to go away but don’t have to feel forever challenging.
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PARENTS: How to help your child with executive functioning disorder….and stay sane
Parenting a child with executive functioning challenges can be incredibly frustrating at times. Everything takes longer to get done. That new jacket you bought them? Water bottle? Lunchbox? Yup, they are lost.
As parents, we get tired of repeating the same things over and over again. Nagging doesn’t feel good for us or our children. It isn’t a helpful way to guide them. These books will provide new ways of thinking and conceptualizing your children’s strengths and weaknesses. It is much easier to be patient if we understand our child isn’t just willfully refusing to pick up the toys in their room.
Executive skills weaknesses can lead to low self-esteem and a “better not to try than fail” attitude. The skills learned in these books can begin turning that around. Let’s help our children shift the focus from the negative to the positive and help them take advantage of all the wonderful things about themselves.
Kids with executive dysfunction struggle with many basic tasks in life. These books will give you concrete tools and ideas to help strengthen executive skills. The added bonus will be to hopefully reduce stress levels in the house.
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TEENS: Learning new executive function skills
The teen years are a critical time to learn executive function skills in order to get organized. The demands in school increase and students are now expected to juggle assignments and deadlines on their own.
Teens need to manage backpacks filled with multiple binders, remember expectations from different teachers, bring the right books home to complete the right homework, AND on top of it they have to actually turn in their assignments! AHHHH- this can feel so overwhelming to a teen with an executive functioning disorder.
Teens can start to feel quite stressed and become worried about their ability to manage the demands of college. High school is a great time to work on and develop the study habits that can carry them into college and increase their chance to feel successful with what they set out to do.
I highly recommend these books as great resources for teens with executive functioning disorder to learn effective time management skills, create the optimal study environment, and improve study skills overall. Get practicing!
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Books on executive functioning for CHILDREN:
These books introduce the topic of executive dysfunction in a fun and age-appropriate fashion. It is important for kids to be able to identify challenges and name them so they don’t feel alone.
These books help to give parents and kids a language to easier communicate about why some things are difficult for your child and try to find positive solutions.
Smart but Scattered is a book in a popular series. It will help your older child read about and practice executive function skills.
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Looking for resources on ADHD? Check out these posts:
Kids with ADHD: A 10-year-old’s experience
I hope you have enjoyed some of these books and found them helpful. Are there other books you would recommend or do you have comments on these books? Let me know your thoughts!
Great resources. Saved away for future reference. So many parents need info to help their children.
For some reason, the list of book recommendations for adults does not appear on my screen. I have an adult son (27 years) with severe executive functioning deficits and I am trying to find something that he might be interested in reading and that might give him some strategies for moving forward. Thanks for any help you can provide.
There are two books/workbooks listed under the adult section: Understand Your Brain, Get More Done and the book ADD Friendly Ways to Organize Your Life. You can also check on my website https://drmelissawelby.com/mental-health-bookstore/ and you will see a few more options in the ADHD section.
I can not see the recommended books for Parents of children with executive function disorder. I also looked in your library and was unable to find it.
Thank you,
Andi
Sometimes the links break. I need to type the titles into the post in case that happens again! Thank you. The books I recommended for that are Late Lost and Unprepared: A Parents Guide to Helping Children with Executive Functioning and The Everything Parents Guide to Children with Executive Function Disorder. Hope that helps
I looked all over this page, signed up for all the things, and still could not find the top 10 books on this page. How and where do I get the list?
Thank you for letting me know! I didn’t realize the links were broken and I will hopefully be able to get to this to fix it soon!